woodyvt said...
Thanks for the tips, sorry we all suffer from this, i haven't had an erection in 5 years, but still ejack, but when i do i shoot urine about 2 feet, not a happy site....lol
I feel that if this SE that many of us here know so much about
from personal experience- as well as a couple of other miserable SEs like shrinkage and curves and loss of pleasurable sensation, etc- were emphasized more by the surgeons, and if people knew that alternative effective treatments were available, that choice of surgery would really plummet. Just going by the complaints we see at this forum, it is obvious that there is nothing uncommon about
having one or(for the really lucky) more of these devastating SEs.
Now, it is kind of like when they tell you "you have cancer in your leg bone, and the only known treatment is amputation". So they can probably, or at least maybe- save your life, but you are going to be crippled for life. Now if there is no other choice for an effective treatment, so be it. You lose the leg, end of discussion(for most of us). Then, you do your grieving, but at the same time rejoice that you are still alive. But if there was another treatment that is either just as effective, or maybe even only pretty close to effective-, but you get to keep your leg, and this is made clear to you, which are you going to choose? Honestly, how many guys are going to tell their surgeon "Oh what the hell doc, just cut that leg on off of there"? I think that if a reasonably effective non-surgical treatment that allows you to keep your leg is available- and the surgeon tells every one about
it- then that surgeon is essentially out of business.
And I feel that is at least somewhat analogous to our situation with treatment for PCa. These SEs are devastating, and there is quite a solid % of us that get them for life, eve if some do not get any of them for very long. And the question for me is: is it really necessary? Can we get by without any treatments- or maybe just some lifestyle changes, without putting our lives at unreasonable risk? Is it actually likely that we are going to die from this disease? If the answer is yes, then are there other treatments with a reasonably high likelihood of a cure or at least long term remission that allow us to keep that leg, so to speak? (not that I ever had a leg, or a log, but you know what I mean) And if the answer to that is yes, and this is made plainly clear to all the patients, then I wonder what % will STILL choose to take a chance on the total loss of normal sexual function, and maybe even the loss of dry pants along with it? Call me crazy, I just don't think many guys would take that chance. Not if they knew there was a pretty solid chance they would suffer at least one of these curses for life, and that there really was no or very little extra risk in choosing another treatment.
But getting surgeons to make sure you understand all of this? That is not going to happen very often, I suspect. Other than the "this is not nerve sparing, so you will have total ED, but no big deal you can just inject or worst case have an penile implant", none of the other devastating SEs was even mentioned. And I bet they rarely are.
Not that RT, especially with HT- don't have their own bag of nasty surprises, they certainly do. With a couple of SEs that can easily match or be worse than what we hear about
with surgery. But I just think it is a matter of the frequency of severe SEs. From what I can tell from posters at this forum, and some studies I have read, the devastating SEs are far less common. And even if you do get them, they might not show up for years after treatment. Later is better far as I'm concerned. But, the SEs for AS looks to be about
zero.